Tara-Nicholle Nelson
(This article has been abridged for the full article follow the link at the bottom of the page)
1. Bizarre collection overload. Let’s face facts: it is very difficult for almost any collection to look orderly and neutral, two high-level aims of home staging. Unless you have attractive, high-end built-in cases for your collections and target buyers share your affinity for the objects, even your cool clock collection or the dolls your grandmother gave you can come off as a pile of space-consuming clutter.
But when it comes to shockingly bad staging decisions, the choice to give your taxidermy collection or your gun collection a starring role in your home’s staging ranks up there in the top few. These collections are highly likely to trigger (pardon the pun) ethical and sanitation concerns in the minds of many home buyers, and are completely distracting from the strengths and features your home has to offer.
Source: Miami.Curbed.com
2. Echo chamber staging. In an echo chamber, sounds are amplified because they simply bounce around in that closed space. The same can happen with your thoughts and ideas about staging, if you don’t open yourself up to outside input. And unfortunately, it seems to be the bad staging ideas that get amplified, more than the good ones.
For instance, no matter how great your taste is, if your home is heavily customized around your personal preferences, it can be very difficult for buyers-to-be to envision themselves, their families and their belongings in the place. Get input from the pros - and get out there on the market, to see what your competition is like, from a staging perspective, rather than being your own, sole staging adviser.
3. Failure to edit. As the New York Times recently put it, “the job of stagers is to reverse the accumulated creep of hundreds of small and misguided design decisions, and to erase any hints of the messiness of daily life.” The failure to edit is a generalized syndrome which can manifest in all sorts of specific staging woes, from garden variety clutter to disastrous decor style mashups. When you think you’ve edited as much as you can edit, edit again. Think of it as pre-packing.
4. Silly scenarios. The difference between staging and interior design is simple: staging is cost-and-time efficient design undertaken with the specific objective of showing a home off to its best advantage, playing up its features and helping prospective buyers visualize the best lives they could possibly live in the home, should they choose it. Unfortunately, this has led some well-intentioned sellers and stagers to believe they should stage one bedroom as a Parisian boulevard. Stage your home to show off its space, light and conveniences, and the best, basic purposes that unusally small or large spaces could be used for. If your backyard is a huge selling point, stage it with outdoor dining or living room furnishings. Or, for example, if you have a very large Master bedroom sitting area and your home is in a school district sought after by new parent buyers, talk with your agent about staging your sitting area as a nursery with a compact bassinet and appropriate decor.
5. The ‘lived-in’ look. When your home is being shown for sale, it must be immaculate, every single time it’s being shown. It should actually look like no one lives there: no toothbrushes, curling irons, protein shake mixes or paperwork allowed. No bowls of cereal on the counter - actually, nothing on the top of a counter or a table that is not intended to be a design element. Is this difficult to keep up? Absolutely! But you’d be surprised at how bad an impression just a few personal toiletries or dishes can make.
6. Paraphernalia gone wild. Similar to collections, any sort of paraphernalia that is allowed to take over a space has the potential to create an instant turnoff for buyers-to-be viewing your home.
This can include:
- work-at-home electronics, supplies, cords and paper clutter
- pet supplies like litter boxes, cages and food
- children’s toys and sporting goods
- cooking and crafting supplies
- books, magazines, notebooks, piles of mail and writing implements.
7. Closet cramming. If you have years worth of personal belongings of multiple family members that need to be out of sight, but not discarded, it can be very tempting to cram everything in a closet, shove the door shut and call it good. Problem is, home buyers today are desperate for storage space, so will undoubtedly open those same, crammed-tight doors in an effort to evaluate how your home ranks for storage. Beautifully organized closets with ample room create an impression in the buyer’s mind that they, too, can have an orderly life in your home, a life where there is a place for everything - and everything has a place.
8. Failing to stage for all the senses. A house that smells like pet mayhem or smoke or has a noisily defective heater is a tough house to sell, no matter how beautifully it is staged.
9. Not to. Ultimately, the most shockingly bad of all staging decisions is the surprisingly frequent decision not to bother staging your home at all. Not staging at all - not even bothering to do DIY staging - happens every day, and it costs more than the costs of putting some time and effort into getting your home ready for the market. If you’re on a budget, talk with your agent and see what she can do to help.
